Pedro G. Cavallero analyzes the current escalating dispute with Uruguay and Argentina in opposition (or in confrontation). As explained, the dispute has come as a result of two European companies’ decision to build an ambitious cellulose-pressing company in Uruguay. Cavallero illustrates the fact that Argentina‘s concern is the would-be environmental impact, stemming from the plant’s operation, in one of its provinces. On the other hand, the Uruguay‘s response has to push forward with expanding foreign trade policy. Cavallero thinks that this dispute has revealed a subtler discontent: the lack of an effective institutional venue to adjudicate transnational matter, in other words, a trusted, impartial mediator.

Fabián Bosoer believes that winds of change are blowing in Latin America again. Some people, enthusiastic or worried, consider that the turn to the left of the continent is getting deeper, in order to stress a rupture with the nineties. For others, he adds, the classic dilemma between populism and liberal democracy is on the table again. Bosoer rejects both positions, which put all the countries of the world in the same basket, and states a third alternative. In any case, the key question is: Is there a new paradigm of the democratic governability in Latin America?

Pedro G. Cavallero states that electoral processes in Latin America receive sporadic coverage in the US despite the fact that most of the region’s democracies are far from fully consolidated. Mr. Cavallero analyzes the Mexican political situation –before National elections– and notes that the perception of Mexico in the US remains blurred, often distorted, and even reduced to simplistic notions, and despite this “binding vicinity”, the country is becoming a vanishing neighbor for the US.